Memorials of Wexford

By Thomas Davis

'TWIXT Croghan-Kinshela and Hook Head, 'twixt Carnsore and Mount
Leinster, there is as good a mass of men as ever sustained a state by
honest franchises, by peace, virtue, and intelligent industry; and as
stout a mass as ever tramped through a stubborn battle. There is a
county where we might seek more of stormy romance, and there is a
county where prospers a shrewder economy, but no county in Ireland is
fitter for freedom than Wexford.

They are a peculiar people--these Wexford men. Their blood is for the
most part English and Welsh, though mixed with the Danish and Gaelic,
yet they are Irish in thought and feeling. They are a Catholic people,
yet on excellent terms with their Protestant landlords. Outrages are
unknown, for though the rents are high enough, they are not unbearable
by a people so industrious and skilled in farming.

Go to the fair and you will meet honest dealing, and a look that heeds
no lordling's frown--for the Wexford men have neither the base bend nor
the baser craft of slaves. Go to the hustings, and you will see open
and honest voting; no man shrinking or crying for concealment, or
extorting a bribe under the name of "his expenses." Go to their farms,
and you will see a snug homestead, kept clean, prettily sheltered (much
what you'd see in Down), more green crops than even in Ulster, the
National School and the Repeal Reading-room well filled, and every
religious duty regarded.

Wexford is not all it might be, or all that, with more education and
the life-hope of nationality, it will be--there is something to blame
and something to lament, here a vice sustained, and there a misfortune
lazily borne; yet, take it for all in all, it is the most prosperous,
it is the pattern county of the South; and when we see it coming
forward in a mass to renew its demand for native
government, it is an omen that the spirit of the people outlives
quarrels and jealousies, and that it has a rude vitality which will
wear out its oppressors.

Nor are we indifferent to the memories of Wexford. It owes much of its
peace and prosperity to the war it sustained. It rose in '98 with
little organisation against intolerable wrong; and though it was
finally beaten by superior forces, it taught its aristocracy and the
government a lesson not easily forgotten--a lesson that popular anger
could strike hard as well as sigh deeply; and that it was better to
conciliate than provoke those who even for an hour had felt their
strength. The red rain made Wexford's harvest grow. Theirs was no
treacherous assassination--theirs no stupid riot--theirs no pale
mutiny. They rose in mass and swept the country by sheer force.

Nor in their sinking fortunes is there anything to blush at.
Scullabogue was not burned by the fighting men.

Yet nowhere did the copper sun of that July burn upon a more
heart-piercing sight than a rebel camp. Scattered on a hill-top, or
screened in a gap, were the grey-coated thousands, their memories mad
at burned cabins, and military whips, and hanged friends; their hopes
dimmed by partial defeat; their eyes lurid with care; their brows full
of gloomy resignation. Some have short guns, which the stern of a boat
might bear, but which press through the shoulder of a marching man; and
others have light fowling-pieces, with dandy locks--troublesome and
dangerous toys. Most have pikes, stout weapons, too; and though some
swell to hand-spikes, and others thin to knives, yet, for all that,
fatal are they to dragoon or musketeer if they can meet him in a rush;
but how shall they do so? The gunsmen have only a little powder in
scraps of paper or bags, and their balls are few and rarely fit. They
have no potatoes ripe, and they have no bread--their food is the worn
cattle they have crowded there, and which the first skirmish may rend
from them. There are women and children seeking shelter, seeking those
they love; and there are leaders busier, feebler, less knowing, less
resolved than the women and the children.

Great hearts! how faithful ye are! How ye bristled up when the foe came
on, how ye set your teeth to die as his shells and round-shot fell
steadily; and with how firm a cheer ye dashed at him, if he gave you
any chance at all of a grapple! From the wild burst with which ye
triumphed at Oulart Hill, down to the faint gasp wherewith the last of
your last column died in the corn-fields of Meath, there is nothing to
shame your valour, your faith, or your patriotism. You wanted arms, and
you wanted leaders. Had you had them, you would have guarded a green
flag in Dublin Castle a week after you beat Walpole. Isolated,
unorganised, unofficered, half-armed, girt by a swarm of foes, you
ceased to fight, but you neither betrayed nor repented. Your sons need
not fear to speak of Ninety-eight.

You, people of Wexford, almost all Repealers, are the sons of the men
of '98; prosperous and many, will you only shout for Repeal, and line
roads and tie boughs for a holiday? Or will you press your
organisation, work at your education, and increase your political
power, so that your leaders may know and act on the knowledge that,
come what may, there is trust in Wexford?

﻿

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